Name: Journal of Social History Publisher: Journal of Social History Audience: Academic Format: Magazine/Journal Subject: History; Sociology and social work Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Journal of Social
History ISSN:0022-4529

Issue:

Date: Spring, 2011 Source Volume: 44 Source Issue: 3

Topic:

NamedWork: The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern
England (Nonfiction work)

Persons:

Reviewee: Thomas, Keith

Accession Number:

254405165

Full Text:

The Ends of Life. Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England. By
Keith Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. xvi plus 393 pp.).

Keith Thomas's new book, based on his Ford Lectures delivered
at Oxford in 2000, is a wonderfully rich survey of the cultural
landscape of early modern England. Written with humanity and insight, it
is a delight to read and an ideal introduction. With over ninety pages
of endnotes, it also provides scholars with a happy hunting-ground. Six
wide-ranging chapters explore a number of 'ends'-military
prowess, work and vocation, wealth and possessions, honour and
reputation, friendship and sociability, and fame and the afterlife.
Tracing shifts over the period, they chart the transformation of
'friendship' from vertical to primarily horizontal ties, and
its gradual separation from family and kin, changes in the nature and
expectations of marriage, the emergence of new forms of sociability
(coffee-house, club, tea-party), and the development of
'taste' in the acquisition of material goods and furnishings,
along with much else. Thomas is fully aware of the conceptual and
evidential problems inherent in his project. How far can we speak of
individuality in the early modern period? How far were people conscious
of the possibility, let alone propriety, of seeking a personal
fulfilment? Elite families generally subordinated individual wishes to
the interest of the family as a whole, and its lineage. Jacobean
satirists and dramatists such as Ben Jon-son thought primarily in terms
of 'character' types. Even spiritual autobiography quickly
assumed a generic form, with writers tracing broadly similar paths from
sinfulness through conversion to grace. But if individuality still had
far to go, Thomas stresses how far it had already come. The conventional
discourse urging acceptance of one's given station in life has to
be set against "widespread evidence of active agency, mobility,
self-help, and independence of spirit" (p.41). To the evidence he
adduces we might add the idiosyncratic autobiography of the Tudor
musician Thomas Whythorne, and the deeply personal travails of the
Stuart nonconformist Agnes Beaumont. Finding clues to an
individual's inner drives poses a different kind of problem,
especially for the poor and less literate. While we can trace
misbehaviour through court records, there is little direct evidence on
the inner thoughts of the silent and outwardly respectable majority;
Quaker and similar writings, however rich, are highly unrepresentative.
The surviving evidence is weighted heavily towards the social and
intellectual elites, and the book inevitably reflects this, though
Thomas does all he can to probe attitudes lower down the social scale.
He acknowledges too the fact that for the poor, life was bound by
constraints that generally left little room to pursue personal ends. For
most, life was about survival and providing for their families. And for
women, especially, it was widely regarded as inappropriate to pursue any
personal goal other than to be a good wife, mother, and neighbour.

Thomas marshals here a vast body of material. He also sets out,
very fairly, evidence of widely different, even opposing attitudes.
Early modern English culture was far from homogeneous, and characterised
in all these fields by remarkable diversity both within and among
different social strata, and over time. This was an age in which
asceticism and rampant materialism both found many champions and
devotees, though consumerism clearly emerged victorious. The book's
title, however, is slightly misleading. Agreement over a particular
cultural attribute might range from those who regarded it as generally
appropriate to those for whom it was the driving force in their lives.
While the title suggests a focus on the latter, Thomas in fact ranges
across the entire spectrum. This is most evident in the chapter on
military prowess, which (perhaps surprisingly) comes first. For much of
the period, England was at peace, and only a very small proportion of
the elites chose to pursue a military career overseas, fighting as
volunteers. Most aristocrats and gentlemen were proud of their skill in
fencing and horsemanship, and no doubt hoped to perform with courage and
honour should the need arise. But these were hardly 'ends in
life' or 'roads to fulfilment'. Most ordinary men had
neither the wish nor opportunity to pursue a military life, though again
most would hope to have the courage to defend themselves and their
families if the occasion demanded. The apprentice Roger Lowe beat a man
for slandering his mother, and the young schoolmaster Adam Martindale
fought a pupil's aggressive father; while both took satisfaction in
what they had done, neither viewed such incidents as any kind of
fulfilment.

Probably no living scholar can match Keith Thomas's range of
reference, and his book offers a treasury of apt and illuminating
nuggets, including the bizarre case of a minister charged with eating
custard "after a scandalous manner" (pp. 134-5). One early
reviewer quibbled at quotations being taken out of context, but I found
nothing here to suggest that Thomas has misunderstood or misused his
evidence. The alternative option, presenting a small body of evidence in
depth, would have exposed him to the opposite charge of selecting
evidence that might be unrepresentative. Cultural history can only
rarely be quantified, and requires both broad surveys and in-depth
studies of specific aspects; Thomas explicitly places this book in the
first category, inviting others to refine and revise his picture. Some
readers may wonder at his decision to relegate the quest, for salvation
to the final chapter. This was a deeply religious age, and he
acknowledges that much more could have been said on this score. But he
also notes that while men spoke of this vale of tears and the joys of
heaven, very few showed any desire to shorten their lives, unless they
were suffering from a grievous illness. Thomas also acknowledges that
other 'roads to fulfilment' might have been explored. For the
sailor Edward Barlow, for example, life was driven by an irresistible
'itch' to see foreign parts. But what he gives us here, the
fruit of a lifetime's reading and reflection, throws vivid light on
early modern English culture in all its variety.